


Awake, Arise

by atheartagentleman



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angels, Angst, Crossover, Daemons, F/M, Gen, HDM AU, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, M/M, Revolution, Revolutionaries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 21:32:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheartagentleman/pseuds/atheartagentleman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The witches whisper of a war, and the crows of the Magisterium gather. Lord Enjolras, they say, wants to build a bridge to another world. What he might attempt there is anyone's guess, but the dark intent that moves him makes them afraid.</p><p>-------</p><p>In which Enjolras is Lord Asriel, hell-bent on building his barricades to bring down the highest monarchy there is. His Dark Materials AU, with the characters from Les Miserables.</p><p>[possibly the slowest updating fic in history but very much a work in progress]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.” - Paradise Lost
> 
> *******
> 
> At long last, it is here! This fic is the brain-child of the lovely Maddi (Tumblruser suchbluesky) and myself, and has been more than two months in the making.
> 
> Proofread, as ever, by human-ithink (I owe you, my darling).
> 
> Further tags and warnings to be added.

It was a testament both to young Lord Enjolras' appearance and to the magnetism of his presence that the first thing people noticed about him was not Marianne. Instead, they saw a sharply mobile face, tightly controlled, with eyes that seemed to glitter and the brow of an Empress. It was the face of a man made impetuous through a combination of noble birth and fierce intelligence, who knew what he wanted and was accustomed to getting it. It was the face of a man whose ambitions and energy were straining at the seams of the polite chatter that filled the expensive room, whose heart pumped a blood too wild for delicate champagne flutes, murmurous voices and pearls.

Marianne was generally a very close second though.

Enjolras' reputation preceded him, and it was through the usual channels of rumour-mongering among the rich and the bored that Marisa Coulter first came to hear of him. He was very young, but had come to the public eye after his parents' death in an airship accident some three years earlier, when he inherited the Enjolras title and the vast estates attached to that name. They said he had been admitted to Oxford to read Experimental Theology at the age of sixteen, and had become the protege of the Master of Jordan College. They said -- always in hushed tones -- that his daemon was a lion. They said he was very beautiful. Well, mused Marisa, They were right on that count. The youth by the mantlepiece, currently in deep conversation with the Duke, stood out even among the impeccably groomed guests of the Duchess' party. He was almost luminously blonde, and a scrap of ribbon was struggling to contain a mane to match his daemon's; his hands were slender and pale, a scholar's hands, wonderfully expressive but never fidgeting. She could not see his features clearly from this distance, but from what she could tell, he had been graced with a profile composed almost entirely of razor-sharp lines. And then, of course, there was Marianne, the great maned lioness who lounged at his feet with half-lidded eyes. Ozymandias had noticed her at once and chittered excitedly, his black little paws tight on Marisa's arm as she gentled him in silent agreement. 'They' had been wrong about the lion.

He was so very young, and the mere thought made her feel strangely worldly, though she was only a few years his senior. She had married into the political circles which were his birthright, and she moved through them with an apparent artlessness he would never possess. Nobody, looking at him, could doubt he had plans of some kind, because every gesture, even from afar, was filled with intent. Nobody would ever underestimate him, the way she manoeuvred them into underestimating her. It was the drive etched into the very set of his spine that drew her in, more than even his loveliness could.

She knew there would be no chance of speaking to him tonight. The evening had already progressed too far for new introductions, and all those who might make them were otherwise engaged. Over by the window, her husband was speaking with Lord Boreal, his face ruddy with whiskey; Marisa made her way over to join him, ever the perfect young wife. Across the room, a lioness' gaze flicked up for an instant, only to be caught by that of a golden monkey, perched high on a shelf. They held the connection for a moment in suspension, before Ozymandias turned and dropped back to Marisa's shoulder.

******

Three months flew by before Marisa saw Enjolras again. This time, the setting was an Experimental Theology Conference, hosted annually at a centre a few miles outside of London. It had formerly been the country home of some aristocrat or other, but bankruptcy had forced its sale, and the eccentric American millionaire who purchased it on a whim had long toyed with the idea of tearing it down entirely to build a medieval folly of sorts, before deciding to devote it to hosting scholarly gatherings instead. Its grand dining rooms and halls had been converted -- oh how she hated that word, it was so unaesthetically utilitarian -- its outhouses re-purposed as parking facilities for attendees, and its bedrooms made available for letting. What character it retained was a pale imitation of its former glory, designed to the specifications of a man with no conception of English breeding, to cater to the predictable imaginations and stately-home-fantasies of theologians from around the world. Those who, like Mrs Coulter, had walked and learned in the flagstoned grandeur of Oxford quadrangles found it faintly distasteful, and many preferred not to spend any more time than strictly necessary in the Centre.

For all its insipid ostentatiousness, the calibre of the contributions to this particular conference was always very high, and Marisa had attended for several years in the company of a few of the Scholars -- all middle-aged or elderly women -- from her old college. Her encounter with Enjolras was entirely unplanned, although she tipped her hat to the universe for orchestrating it so neatly. It was only when a faceless, uniformed usher handed her a Programme of Events that she realised Enjolras was scheduled to co-present a paper with Grumman. She frowned when she saw its timing: the radiant prodigy's slot clashed with one of the highlights of the Conference, a paper on the implications of anthropological study for the future of Theology which she was especially interested in hearing, and was to be held in one of the smaller rooms at the back of the centre. No matter. She would undoubtedly have other opportunities to see him over the following days.

It was not until she was filing in to hear the Implications of Anthropology presentation that Marisa changed her mind. She turned abruptly, ruffling the feathers of those in line behind her, and, smiling sweetly, pushed her way through the throng of academics under the disapproving gazes of old men and their somberly-plumed daemons. From his place in the crook of her arm, her own beautiful daemon glared, his skull-like face contorting with anger as he sensed the weight of assumptions and judgments about their sex.

She was at the other end of the building in under a minute and slipped into the almost-empty room where the grizzled figure of Stanislaus Grumman was organising a pile of papers on a lectern, while a member of staff set up a lantern and slides. Enjolras was nowhere to be seen. She recognised a few faces among the meagre audience from lecture theatre podiums and her own student days. Convinced she had made a mistake in coming, but irritably aware of the fact that she would never find a seat if she returned to the Anthropology talk now, Mrs Coulter took a seat near the back. Hunched on the chair next to hers, Ozymandias picked at the straining seam of the upholstery, his movements tight and his little nails deliberate and vicious. The release of tension across her shoulders when Lord Enjolras swept through the side-door was almost palpable, and its intensity unsettled her. He strode over to the small stage, Marianne bounding up ahead of him, and threw an apologetic grimace in Grumman's direction without slowing. It was Marianne who padded over to where Grumman's daemon perched, and lowered her great head in apology. Mrs Coulter twitched in barely concealed skepticism and surprise at the display.

She did not have the time to ponder it, however, as Grumman merely clapped the lordling on the shoulder before stepping up to the lectern and addressing the room.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he began, and Mrs Coulter almost laughed. The audience barely qualified for such an honorific, and she was the only lady present.

'Thank you for coming today. Our ruse has succeeded, and we have cleared a few more spaces at the Anthropology in Experimental Theology talk by luring you here.' Grumman paused for a moment to allow the elderly Oxford Scholar (from Gabriel, she thought) in the corner to chortle happily, before continuing. 'The research and findings we are going to present to you today are very much in their infancy, but there is no doubt in either of our minds that they constitute the beginning of something truly revolutionary.'

Somebody off to one side lit the lantern with a hiss of gas, and a grainy slide was thrown onto the screen, hazy at first and then sharpened as the unseen technician adjusted the focus, and the lights in the room were dimmed. Marisa squinted at it, trying to make out the details, but could see almost nothing.

'This, my learned friends, is the universe. The photogram was taken six months ago in northern Siberia by an amateur explorer when his apparatus misfired, and he unknowingly captured an image of the heavens, instead of the forest he was intending to document.' Another ripple of laughter moved through the small audience, and Grumman shrugged in rueful acknowledgement of the inexplicable vagaries of serendipity. Marisa suppressed an impatient sigh at the lengthy exposition.

'Now, I would like to draw your attention to the top left corner of the photogram, and to this unassuming little patch of what can really only be described as fluff. When analysed in a chapel with equipment kindly made available to us by Jordan College, this fluff resolved itself into...'

There followed a pregnant pause during which the technician changed the slide in the lantern and the quality of the silence in the room changed. It was no longer the politely attentive quiet of an audience, but the expectant hush of academic minds suddenly made alert by the promise of new discoveries. For all her skepticism and porcelain impatience, Marisa was herself a scholar, had attended lectures in Oxford and burnt the candle at both ends over books and experiments, her eyes straining in the half-gloom to read the faces of instruments so new and brilliant that they were almost unique. She never had been immune to that burning thirst, and the hum of the room caught in her throat and lit a spark in her. Grumman was good.

'... this.'

The slide had flicked over, and the new photogram was a closer frame of that indistinct cluster of fluff, which had resolved itself into a swarm of almost-shapes, picked out in faint colours in the tinting process. They were faint, and could only really be seen by looking out of the corner of one's eye, but they were unmistakable nonetheless. Beside her, Ozymandias was very still, his eyes wide as saucers and his nails biting into the flesh of her arm. Yes, this, this was beautiful. Grumman, master of ceremonies, allowed the silence to stretch for a breathless infinity, a smile curling his lips and lifting years off a face that must have been handsome.

'This is a whole new particle -- so new, in fact, that we have not yet settled on a name. My friends, I am an explorer first and foremost, and though I grasp the fundamentals of experimental theology, I cannot hope to compete with the assembled brilliance of this room,' he flashed them a self-deprecating smile, 'so I shall hold my peace and leave the theology to Lord Enjolras.'

The young man stepped forward with a graceful smile at the mention of his name, and took Grumman's place at the lectern amid a patting of shoulders and nodded smiles. When he began to speak, Marisa could hear the bells of the Oratory of St Stephen in London, high and clear but underlayed with a bronze resonance that could raise armies. He gestured as he explained, but fought against himself every step of the way, the sweep of his arms cut short. She wondered how many governesses it had taken to enforce such restraint on him. On anyone else, it might have looked clumsy. On him, it looked caged. His command of the subject was masterful, and Marisa was reminded yet again that he was not only a pretty nobleman, but a prodigy who began his studies at an early age under the personal direction of the most illustrious of Oxford's Scholars and chaplains at the behest of the Master of Jordan, who (it was said) had made Enjolras his protege.

And the research! Oh, the research. Such potential, could it only be envisioned and realised. Ozymandias surveilled the audience, who showed interest but no fire, nothing resembling the brazier that had been kindled in Marisa, the anbaric hum within her. They had not realised the momentousness of that humble, blurry corner of the sky which held the key to... Well, she did not yet know what it held the key to, but she harboured not a shred of doubt that it would change everything. Lord Enjolras, still speaking, illustrating his technical explanation with lantern slide after lantern slide, but occasionally getting ahead of himself in his eagerness, had also noticed. His awareness of the importance of his work was plain on his face, and Marisa smiled in recognition. Here was a man she could respect, not just use.

*******

The customary litany of questions and answers followed the end of the presentation, but Marisa could not concentrate, though the erudition of the listeners promised enlightening debate. Her mind was awhirl with possibilities, and she could not tell where her thoughts about the Particle ended, and those about its charismatic standard-bearer began. She saw him, bathed in the light of his own brilliance, promising to change the world, and trembled to find that she found she could follow him. Profoundly disconcerted, she exited the lecture room and made her way to one of the conference attendants, who bore a tray of sparkling wine. The cool glass of the flute's stem under her fingers calmed her raging nerves and anchored her, reminding her of who she was. She took a dainty sip, but the gesture was absent, an afterthought in the name of expectations; the wine was cheap and foul, but the conference-organisers felt it a necessary part of the attendees' expectations. Really, it was far too early in the day to be serving anything but chilled white wine, or the lightest of cocktails anyway. Nonetheless, the reassuring touch of familiar objects grounded her enough to allow her to collect herself, to realign all the pieces that had been threatening to fly apart from being overwound. The golden monkey clinging to her other hand settled too, his sinewed limbs relaxed once more, and the pair exchanged a secret smile as things became clear.

They had to have Enjolras, and Marianne too, that much was certain. Oh, what a pair they would make. They would be unstoppable, and their meeting seemed, in that moment, a cosmic inevitability.

What had formerly been one of the largest reception rooms of the house had been further enlarged by the removal of the walls that had previously separated it from the adjacent rooms, and now served as the principal foyer for the conference, where guests milled between talks. It was to this room that Marisa allowed herself to be borne by the swell of people she found once she rejoined one of the principal artery-hallways. Had she been less distracted, she might have resisted the strangely purposeful amble that is the movement of eminent minds deep in conversation towards refreshments. She might have sought to catch Enjolras immediately, or perhaps even to seek out solitude and gather her thoughts more fully. Before she knew it, however, she was spilling into the open space and being offered more cheap champagne and platters of sandwiches. Ozymandias hissed at the wait-staff and they retreated fast, unused to such behaviour from the experimental theologians who now gathered in pockets, eagerly discussing their latest research, intent on proving its superiority to that of their companions.

With a strained smile, she joined a nearby conversation so as not to be afloat and conspicuously alone. Within a few minutes, another had joined them: the Scholar who had laughed so heartily at Grumman's showmanship. He did not acknowledge her, but immediately began expostulating on the subject of what he had decided to dub the 'Grumman-Enjolras Phenomenon'. As he waxed lyrical, the rest of the group fidgeted, first in embarrassment, then in amusement, as the youth so praised materialised behind the old Scholar's shoulder, one eyebrow raised and his lips twitching. The moment dragged, and then Marianne shook her great head and exhaled a wave of hot air over the man's back. He jumped in alarm but caught himself fast, instead throwing a genial arm around Enjolras and dragging him forward.

'Ah, but here he is, the man of the hour! I shall say no more, except that you must be very, and rightfully, proud.'

Had the adrenaline of success not still been coursing, fast and heady, through Enjolras' veins, and had the old man not been an occasional (though ill-liked) tutor of his at Oxford, he might have reacted very differently to the gesture. As it was, he thrummed with nervous energy as though it were anbar and not blood in his veins, and allowed himself to be manhandled into the loose circle. But the entertainment of the situation having worn off, and Enjolras finding himself incapable (or perhaps merely undesirous) of explaining his research without the aid of his slides, a stilted silence set in. With a shuffling of feet and a well-rehearsed ribbon of congratulations and goodbyes, the group disintegrated, until soon only Marisa, Enjolras and the old Scholar remained. He, glancing between them and possibly illuminated by a rare flash of human insight, departed in search of more wine and a fresh ear.

And then there were two.

'I do not believe I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance.'

His tone had the practiced, impersonal lightness of a boy trained for the highest society, but it did not match his glittering eyes, which seemed to weigh her. She could only guess that he had not found her wanting.

'Marisa Coulter. The pleasure is all mine, my Lord.'

He shook her proffered hand with smile that showed the barest hint of pointed teeth. If he was taken aback by her initiation of the gesture, he gave no outward sign of it, and Marianne merely raised her head, her powerful shoulders reaching upward, until she was almost level with Ozymandias where he clung to Marisa's hip. Tawny eyes met black and the air around them seemed almost to crackle for a moment. The golden monkey stretched out a hand, a fleeting contact with sandy fur before the connection was broken.

'I read your dissertation for my final year theoretical report,' he smiled almost ruefully, as though he had been caught where he should not have been, but there was no apology in his face.

She did not know what she had been expecting -- a comment on his acquaintance with her husband, maybe -- but it was certainly not this. The surprise, however, was not unwelcome. For an instant, she was back in her shabby but well-loved room on the outskirts of Oxford, surrounded by sheaths of paper and research notes, trying to make sense of numbers even as her eyes blurred with tiredness and her frustration with her tutors mounted. She had poured her heart and soul into those fifty or so pages, and the settled truth that, once marked, it would simply be shelved to gather dust had always rankled. Something of this must have shown in her face, for Enjolras continued --

'I found it most enlightening. I hope you will not be angry with me, but I confess that it was in the back of my mind during my more recent research.'

The laughter that bubbled forth from her in response was underscored by genuine delight, and she gave it a moment to stretch its disused wings before she reined it in once more, and the songbird became the tinkling sound of fashionable merriment (she thought perhaps Marianne flicked an ear at the exact moment the sound of it changed, but she must have imagined it). So he had seen her not an hour before as he orated. Although he could hardly have missed her in so small a room before so small an audience, Marisa found she was pleased by this knowledge. 

'On the contrary, I am delighted, though suprised. I had not thought my dissertation of much value beyond examinations,' her tone became lightly teasing. 'But tell me more about your new work.'

In truth, Marisa had little expectation of success in asking, for Enjolras had refused to be drawn into such conversation by the Gabriel Scholar, but something in his face and his apparently casual mention of his latest research prompted her to try herself at fortune's game anyway. The response, however, was instantaneous. Clouds broke and the young man smiled as Marianne rumbled low in her throat, her paws kneading the ground. Ozymandias chittered in soft triumph at her ear.

'Everything we know so far was in our presentation,' (there was something in his eyes as he said that though) 'but oh, you should see it, it is... quite unlike anything I have ever come across before.'

'See it?'

'Well, not 'it'. Not yet. We have been unable able to recreate or capture any of our particles in a chapel -- though we are hopeful -- but the readings we have obtained thusfar are truly beautiful, and make for fascinating analysis in other fields. For instance, using them as a backdrop for the analysis of light is helping in the exploration of currently unexplained phenomena.'

Marisa listened with unfeigned interest, but as she did so, she also began to manoeuvre Enjolras towards the nearest exit, by a combination of subtle shifts in her weight that had her moving slowly backward, and under the pretext of seeking further refreshments. In retrospect, she would realise she had been foolish to assume that Enjolras did anything he was not himself consciously willing to do, and that he followed her freely, not through trickery.

'As with photo-repulsion, which we believe may have links to our particle.'

Here, he paused and his smile grew momentarily thin. He was on especially treacherous ice and clearly aware of it, and golden fur bristled under Marisa's fingers, an alarm bell in her rapture. Photo-repulsion was a favourite moral illustration invoked by the Magisterium to demonstrate the forces of good and evil. Alternative explanations could easily be condemned. Still, the affection in his voice as it caressed the still-unnamed discovery was apparent. It, if nothing else, betrayed his caution.

'But we can know very little more until our next -- I should say first -- expedition.'

'You travel north?'

They had now almost reached the door. Having noticed that Enjolras seemed as eager as she to escape that stifling reception room, and her self-assurance bolstered by that awareness, Marisa had increased the pace until they were walking with quiet purpose, heads inclined toward one another as they talked, his gestures frequently leading his hand to brush against her elbow. Her success seemed now assured to her.

'Yes, in a few weeks. Dr Grumman, of course, has been before, on unrelated business. And I understand that you have, too?'

Ah, so he clearly had contacts at the Arctic Institute, for her expedition had been short and of little note beyond that academy's walls. That was unsurprising, but Marisa was glad to be sure nonetheless. She waved off the admiration bestowed by the question with another laugh and the flutter of a hand. They had finally entered the hallway proper, and the sound of chatter was cut abruptly short as the door swung shut between them and the conversations which filled the room they had just left. She spoke in part to mask the sudden silence.

'A mere matter of routine observations, and not so far north. We stopped maybe fifty miles south-west of Arkhangelsk.'

Enjolras nodded, and the silence hovered, almost palpable.

'As I said, Dr Grumman is the expert...'

'Of course. A truly remarkable man -- though his views are known to be... unconventional.'

Marianne stiffened and her tail swished, almost brushing the carpet, even as Ozymandias dropped from his perch to approach her, his eyes half-closed. Enjolras had been impeccably courteous up to that point, showing true animation only when dwelling on the future of his work. The tension that set into his shoulders at Marisa's words was of a different kind, however, and the guarded look in his eyes was no longer that of a young and well-mannered gentleman, but rather the calculating intensity of a powerful man who senses a potential adversary for the first time. She might have cursed, but for the thrill it sent down her spine. There was true emotion and something wild and high and flickering that cracked the edges of the veneers they both maintained. She inhaled deeply against the rush of it and her beautiful daemon's face split into something that might have been a grin had it contained fewer teeth.

'The academic community has never had anything but the highest respect for him, and his work.' Enjolras' tone was pleasant, but there was no mistaking the proud tilt of his chin.

The edges of Marisa's answering smile curled into the dark hair that brushed her cheeks, and she lowered her voice to a murmur, deep and almost purring. Not conspiratorial, but intimate, the cuff at her wrist just brushing his sleeve when she raised a hand to tuck a wayward strand back behind her ear.

'I was especially interested to read his recent collaboration with Professor Langdon. A man of many interests, our Dr Grumman.' The paper had caused a sensation when it had been published six nearly months prior, and Scholars and Magisterium officials alike were scrabbling like beetles to reconcile its mathematically sound conclusions with established doctrine. The unofficial understanding was that further pursuit of that line of inquiry risked being declared heretical, and that any whose curiosity was too strong to put aside courted excommunication.

Enjolras' eyes were half-lidded as his own lips arranged themselves into a smirk that was pleased and lazy and self-possessed and laced through with subtle cruelty. She could not imagine ever seeing him resemble his daemon more than he did in that moment, though Marianne herself was alert, bent towards Ozymandias with her shoulders deceptively delicate above bunched muscle. Neither made any move to distance themselves from woman or monkey.

'It was fascinating, wasn't it?' Though Enjolras was clearly less practiced than she at parlour power games, he had learnt his steps well, the challenge of his words gloved in the velvet of detachment. 'I do not think its impact has yet been fully realised, but I am certain that it will influence and underlie any significant research in the future.'

'And your own?' She was closer than ever, distantly aware that the small alcove they occupied provided only scant cover should someone decide to take this ill-traveled corridor as a short-cut, but quite unable to care. He was intoxicating (it could only be him, for she had not taken more than two or three sips of that wine), with eyes like dark wells and near-heretical ideas which he bore as torches. She could not tell whether he intended to light to way, or to set their world on fire and watch as the flames consumed them all and turned Marianne to burnished gold.

'I do not claim such an epithet for my own work, but the influence is there, yes.'

'You have considered what this means?' For the first time in this short acquaintance, Marisa was worried.

'I am a theologian.'

The surgical precision of that answer momentarily robbed her of breath. It was masterful in its vagueness, but left no doubt as to its true meaning. There was nothing in it that could be held against him, but his hand was set out. He had not only considered the implications of his work, but had thrown open the doors to his own damnation.

'I also do not believe debate is inherently undesirable. Do you?'

And there it was, the final sweeping cut of the rapier that slid under her expert guard, the hand proffered. She reeled, temporarily wrongfooted even as Ozymandias' hand curled into Marianne's mane. For a moment, she wavered on the knife-edge, the tantalising fire of dark eyes and golden hair and a red mouth snarling in savage mirth standing before her. Her eyes flickered closed as she drew deep breaths and warred with herself, her own daemon's distress pleading with her. Even as she swayed forward though, Enjolras shifted his weight back so that the gap between them got no narrower. She felt it like a rush of cold air and her gaze snapped to his face, sudden and furious. There was no apology in his expression, no overwhelmed boyish shyness or bashful eagerness or well-bred reticence. Just burning conviction and perhaps a shadow of surprise.

'It has no place in this field of theology.' Her voice had lost all of its softness, and almost hissed from her lips. 'It was a pleasure meeting you, my Lord.'

She smiled and it was like ice, before turning on her heel and returning to the main foyer, the golden monkey scampering from Marianne to swing back to her shoulder. Neither looked back.

*******

Enjolras left for the North some two weeks later, with much fanfare and more suspicion. His return was quieter. Some might have thought it uneventful, even disappointing, for he did not bring the breakthroughs he had sought, but beneath the surface the ice flows moved and men in official robes whispered anxiously in Geneva and London. He travelled first to Oxford, to his old college, then to his family's London townhouse and managed that extraordinary feat of being at once very visible and utterly unknown. Nobody could say with any certainty what his habits were, how he spent his time or with whom, though it was common to see him strolling along the Strand or taking dinner at his club or simply climbing out of cabs.

Then, about a year after the cocktail party and six months or so after his return from the North, Enjolras' name was splashed across Brytain's papers as he was involved in a society scandal which rocked the aristocracy and the fashionable circles of London. The names of several other young lordlings were involved in hungry whispers, but not mentioned aloud. The son of So-and-so, the nephew of the Earl of Somewhere. There was gossip in tastefully furnished drawing rooms, gasps muffled behind intricate fans, gentlemen looking somber and commenting in grave voices that it was such an old family but that they had always thought nothing good would come of the boy. Enjolras' was the only name shouted from the rooftops, decried, dragged through the mud -- 'did you hear?', 'of course! Who hasn't heard?', 'For shame!', 'and with the godson of that MP, too...'. Enjolras didn't hide. It was useless, far too late and an option never even seriously entertained. Invitations ceased to be brought to him on his breakfast tray, and his friends melted away into fine houses whose doors were suddenly closed to him, but Enjolras and Marianne were still seen in both London and Oxford, the latter having a higher tolerance for such things anyway and whose venerable age immunised it to society goings on.

The court summons came as something of a surprise. These things were usually allowed to run their course until they became old news and were superseded by some newer, juicier scandal. Then again, usually the personality would shun the spotlight for a while and emerge when the weather was fairer, and Enjolras had never played by the book. It was rumoured that the MP, godfather to the unfortunate unnamed youth, honouring traditional patterns, had pressed for the matter to be pursued. His name, of course, was never publicly associated with the prosecution, and neither was that of his godson, but nothing remained a secret for long in such circles. They did not take the stand as witnesses, but others were found who would testify in terms carefully calculated to shock, so that the visitors' gallery frequently had to be called to order, and on one occasion, emptied entirely.

The trial was drawn out, and ugly. Enjolras was mesmerising, and his counsel advised him to deny everything, because his sheer presence when doing so might sway the jury, but Enjolras refused. He spoke strongly in his defense, one hand knotted and white-knuckled in Marianne's mane, but the words 'not guilty' never once crossed his lips. The judge, though sympathetic, found himself with no choice when the jury returned a unanimous verdict with flint in their eyes and a sneer against the high-born on their lips. He was sentenced, and was spared prison only because of that ancient bias which prevented too-rough treatment of those of noble blood. Instead, he was stripped of his lands and his wealth.

At twenty-one, Enjolras returned to Oxford, essentially destitute. Those of his friends who remained by his side throughout opined solemnly that it was not until the verdict that Enjolras showed any sign of emotion beyond contained fury. He made discreet inquiries after the fate of his tenants every few months, and smashed a crystal tumbler by throwing it against a wall when he heard that the Magisterium had dispossessed the families living on one of his former estates to make way for some new installation. Nobody witnessed the incident, and the servant who cleared up the shards under the watchful eyes of the lioness knew better than to say anything.

*******

Marisa Coulter did not forget Enjolras when the rest of the world got bored of him (he dropped from the public eye after his disgrace, and what was the use of Adonis-like beauty if he would not throw or attend parties and gather equally beautiful people around himself like jewels?), but she also had no time to dwell on the memory of the thorns he had offered like roses. She envied him his freedom, perhaps: there was much to be done, and she found herself fenced in at every turn, cut off from the quickest paths and forced into tedious bowing and scraping for even the tiniest amount of rein. In five years, she accomplished what should have taken less than twelve months -- she could have done it, too, she knew, and knew also that it was time.

Then, overnight, her work went from a slow grind to a complete standstill, as London's newstands were plastered with the sudden and unexpected death of Edward Coulter MP.

The servants had found him collapsed in an armchair at his club in the early evening and the coroner had pronounced it heart failure -- not uncommon in a man of his age and position. Those who handled his catering exchanged knowing glances and snidely remarked that it was perhaps not so much the stress of his political duties that had taken its toll but his enjoyment of their advantages. A man who drank and ate like that... Well, one might say he had it coming. Particularly vicious young journalists leapt at this information, but when the more enterprising sought to pursue the line of enquiry, they were rebuffed. The MP's tearful young widow turned them away at the door, begging for privacy and apologising so prettily that the reporters left, quite enamored, and wrote rapturous articles about the dignified beauty of true grief and pledging the emotional support of their readership in such difficult times.

Behind closed doors, Marisa carefully wiped away her tears and fixed her make-up in the ostentatious hall mirror -- she would have to redecorate entirely, the apartment was hideous and far too dark. Stowing her pencils, she smiled at Ozymandias and rubbed a thumb over his head. She could never have divorced Edward. The stain would have followed her for ever, particularly in Geneva, and besides, the Brytish courts had never recognised 'crippling lack of imagination' as a ground for dissolving the sanctity of marriage. No, far better for him to go like this, quietly and predictably and oh so very proper. His mode of departure suited him: it reflected the conventional ambition of well-fed politicians, too concerned about the present to envision what might be. She could achieve far more as his widow than she ever could as his wife.

They said poison was the weapon of a coward. She had always thought they had confused cowardice and good planning.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras had not rebuilt himself, so much as reasserted his existence and expected the world to shift in order to accommodate him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [ygrainette](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrainette/pseuds/ygrainette) for betaing this. She and [human-ithink](http://human-ithink.tumblr.com) are also to be commended for their patience whenever I had writer's block and needed them to bounce ideas off. The ever-lovely [suchbluesky](http://suchbluesky.tumblr.com) is the co-captain of this vessel, so when things start to get painful, it's not 100% my fault.
> 
> In all seriousness, I am so so sorry for how long it has taken me to produce this chapter. I have no excuses, but I hope it won't happen again.
> 
> (see endnote for a terminology thing)

It was dark in the chapel -- long past midnight already -- and the instruments hovered for a moment in the slice of brightness from the door before it fell noiselessly shut behind Enjolras. His hand dropped back to his side before it reached the light-switch. Most of Jordan still used only naphta; it was less expensive than refitting the entire college and the Scholars preferred it. The chapels, however, had been wired for anbar a couple of years earlier, at the behest of a particularly generous donor, who had insisted that the research his money enabled should be properly lit. Enjolras, never one for sentimentality about the past, approved wholeheartedly of the change, but the lateness of the hour and the particular weariness that had settled about him gave him pause, and he continued in the dark instead, trusting Marianne to lead him.

His hand still resting on her head, he dropped onto the stool at one of the work-benches and slumped forward, eyes pressed shut. He was only dimly aware of the minutes trickling by, feeling almost body-less, surrounded by instruments he could not see but sense.

‘My Lord?’

The door had been opened once more, casting sharp shadows on the walls, the light somehow making the darkness more intense, not less. Outlined, hesitating on the threshold, stood Enjolras’ servant Thorold, carrying a travelling crate.

‘Over there, Thorold, thank you.’ He straightened, and as each vertebra clicked back into place, so his self-possession assembled itself about him once more.

The old man did as he was bid. He had been with Enjolras so long that he never thought to ask questions, but had it occurred to him, he might have wondered at the oddity of his master’s behaviour. Though his Lordship had ceased almost all society commitments in the years after his trial, the same could not be said of his political involvement. He had not rebuilt himself, so much as reasserted his existence and expected the world to shift in order to accommodate him.

The corridors and hurrying clerks of Whitehall were not built to withstand the onslaught of such a personality, having always counted on the spotlight of elected politics and parliamentary debate as a lure to deflect the bold and the charismatic from the true avenues of decision-making. Not so Lord Enjolras.

Thorold lived at his elbow and had that particular kind of perceptiveness that a servant develops towards someone he has attended for years. There were telegrams from Ministers crumpled in disdain, the sneer he was always careful to wipe from his features before the public’s latest darling crossed his threshold, the cursory manner in which he glanced at the headlines of most newspapers but scanned the minutiae of more nebulous goings-on with the clear eyes of a hawk.

Thorold had no pretentions to great intellect, but  neither did he consider himself stupid. For all his refined manners and circumspection, he had once been a man of the people, and had never lost the dim sense of that connection to them. It was with that mind that he knew that the showier theatres of politics would scorn Enjolras just as he scorned them. He ironed Enjolras’ newspaper every morning to set its ink, read the front page in doing so and noticed that, after the trial, Enjolras had failed to supply any further stories. The voting public would never forgive him his particular sin, and the press would never forgive him for ceasing to sell copies afterwards. No, his Lordship would never be a Member of Parliament.

It was thus to Whitehall that Enjolras went, and it had crumpled before him like tissue paper.

He became powerful even among the powerful, though he was not yet thirty and it seemed to Thorold only yesterday that he had addressed Enjolras as ‘young Master’ and wordlessly handed him a tumbler of brantwijn when the news of his parents’ death was delivered. His father would have been proud to see his son an adviser to the King, one whose opinion was sought with a mixture of awe and apprehension by men twice, three times his age.

So Thorold did not think to question it when he found Enjolras sitting in pitch darkness in an Oxford basement in the middle of the night, and Enjolras did not think to be grateful because he expected no less.

Instead, Thorold checked the crate over once again before straightening and asking, ‘Was there anything else my Lord?’

‘No, Thorold. Get some sleep.’

‘Very well. Thank you.’ He hesitated for a moment by the door, much as Enjolras had done, before leaving the light as it was and exiting.

There was a moment of suspension, then Marianne rose to her feet and pressed her face to her human’s stomach.

‘We are expected in London in two days’ time.’

He nodded and stood.

The flick of a switch and the chapel was flooded with harsh white light which burned away any remaining traces of whatever strange mood had gripped Enjolras. It gave hard, narrow shadows to clear edges and caused the instruments to gleam in attentive readiness.

He moved efficiently among them, taking readings as he adjusted dials with the barest brush of a hand. There were Scholars to convince and findings to present and an expedition to finance and the watchful gaze of the Consistorial Court and the General Oblation Board to avoid. He had been fortunate, so far, that none of his research had borne the name of Dust and that his earliest work with Grumman had never made that fantastic leap from remote particles to humanity. The knowledge that something crucial was missing had been a source of hair-tearing frustration, but, well... Rusakov had never been the same since the exorcism, so perhaps it was for the best.

Enjolras was not a cautious man, but he could be patient, and Rusakov’s exorcism more than anything else had laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. He turned to secrecy and found he enjoyed it. The world believed him homeward-bound from Lapland at this very moment -- a ship bearing his name shivered through cold waters to maintain the illusion. The Minister of Agriculture’s schedule listed an appointment with the youngest of the King’s advisers two days hence, and the man’s secretary congratulated himself on arranging a meeting so soon after Lord Enjolras’ return from the North.

If all went to plan -- and it would -- the Minister would never see Enjolras again.

For months, the boxes had been piling up in the cellar of a small house in Oxfordshire -- crate after crate of canned food, coal spirit, navigation equipment, maps, a disassembled sled, experimental apparatus, guns and ammunition. They were brought under cover of darkness by the fen-dwellers, with whom Enjolras had always maintained good relations and whose interests he had frequently defended from political machinations. At a word from Enjolras, every last crate would be sent to London, where he would meet them under pretext of keeping his appointment. He and his supplies would be watching the Brytish coast recede by the time the Minister’s secretary checked his watch with a muttered invective against His Lordship’s tardiness.

It would not keep the hounds at bay for long, but it might just give him a sufficient head-start that the machinery of his plans would be too well in motion to be stopped by the time the Magisterium caught up with him.

But first, there were Scholars to cajole. There were funds left over from his decoy expedition since he had been allocated money for a true voyage, but he could not finance a manned one using nothing but the surplus. He needed Jordan’s backing or he would never make it to the sea. And to obtain that backing, he would need tangible progress. More than that, though, he would need a showstopper to distract the Scholars’ razor-sharp minds so they would not see that all his experimental data came from a chapel, and not the wastelands of the North.

*******

Two quads over, light spilled from the Master's Lodge across the inky lawn. The Master sat in his study, deep in thought and quite oblivious to the goings-on in the bowels of his college, though it was Enjolras who was keeping him awake, after a fashion. Enjolras would be requesting funds -- demanding them as his due -- at the meeting the following night. The Scholars would overwhelmingly vote in his favour, as they had every time before, despite the Librarian's hopes of invoking the residency clause against him. The Master knew too what Enjolras was planning. The alethiometer said such terrible things.

His hand twitched (a sign of palsy, perhaps?) around a curl of paper that contained an odourless white powder. Enjolras barely drank, but it would still be so easy. And it would put an end to everything, for none after him would have such ambition again. The alethiometer had been absolute, though it had seemed... It had seemed almost reluctant to divulge the information, but that was impossible. There would be no war. No change. Jordan would be safe. It was his duty as Master to keep Jordan safe. And yet... He remembered Enjolras' face at sixteen, when fresh grief had fought there against dignity and been beaten down. He remembered burning questions and one of the finest minds he had ever taught. Long ago, he had thought... perhaps... a son. And after all, he was old. The Scholars were old. Jordan itself was old. There was a time for all things to die. And to die in the service of ending death? The Master's mind skittered both from the enormity of that knowledge and from what he himself had thought to do.

With a flick of his wrist, paper and powder were tossed into the fireplace and consumed.

He had not dared ask the alethiometer whether Enjolras would succeed.

*******

The Scholars were still at dinner when Enjolras and Marianne returned the following evening, artfully dusty and clad in travelling clothes, and trailed by the college Porter who grunted faintly under the weight of a large packing crate. Brushing off the Butler’s muted indignation at Enjolras’ presumptious breach of etiquette (Wren was a fool and a petty thief), Enjolras made himself comfortable in the Retiring Room to await the end of dinner. The bell signalling the Scholars’ exit from the hall rang soon enough and Enjolras broke off his murmured conversation with Marianne to set up the photogram lantern he would need.

The Master entered first and immediately began frying poppy with the ease of long habit. The heaviness in his heart told him they would have particular need of its effects. His last chance to alter the course of events had passed.

‘Good evening, Master.’ Years had passed since he had been taken under this venerable old man’s wing, but Enjolras would be prepared to wager that the Master’s presence would always make him feel as though he were late in handing in a paper. Even now, as he planned to use this man to further his own designs, that flutter of respect and gratitude and nerves sent Marianne up from her sprawl to sit at attention. The bravado of his solitary occupation of the Retiring Room had been as much for his own benefit as the Master’s.

‘I trust you have had an uneventful return?’ There might have been a flicker in his face, quick as a snake’s tongue, but the lights were too dim for Enjolras to be sure.

‘We thought we might hit a storm two hundred miles out, but the thunderhead did not break.’

‘Good, good. And your experiments?’ Enjolras made to speak, but the Master did not let him. ‘No, of course, you must wait for the others, I quite understand. They will be along presently.’

‘Of course. Thank you.’

In twos and threes, still commenting among themselves about whether the evening’s dessert had been the finest all week, the Scholars of Jordan filed in and settled into chairs that seemed to swallow them until they were only disembodied heads and hands floating aboves acres of black gowns and worn leather. Enjolras greeted each as he entered, commenting on one’s apparent health, another’s recent work or promising to pass on some research he felt would be of particular interest to another still. Creaking gently, the Master served the poppy and the chatter subsided.

‘I speak for us all in bidding you welcome back here; after all, once a member of Jordan College, always a member of Jordan College.’ A chuckle ran around the room as each man recalled hearing these words from the College Officers on his first arrival. ‘However, time is short and Lord Enjolras is required in London tomorrow, so we must press on. I believe you have some findings to present?’

The prodigal son stepped forward with a sharp nod. In this room full of the middle-aged and the elderly, his youth seemed more golden than ever.

‘Gentlemen, it is my sad duty to inform you of the death of one of our esteemed colleagues. He was a close friend and a dear collaborator. Doctor Grumman has been killed.’

The room, already uneasy despite the poppy, burst into cawings of shock and agitation.

‘ _Killed_ , you say?’ The Librarian’s voice cut through the air with its permanent coiling of scepticism and worry.

‘Yes, killed. By the Tartars, some four months ago.’ The Librarian leaned forward as though to speak again, but Enjolras did not let him, knowing that the Master’s oldest friend and ally would be his shrewdest opponent. ‘He was found in the ice by a group of hunters, bloodied and scalped in the patterns we would expect of tribes from further east.’ Let them make of that what they would; fuelling the rumours of a war could only aid Enjolras. ‘Finding him was the true object of my expedition, though you know my official mandate was primarily diplomatic. I must confess I had a personal interest in the matter, besides the point of significant theological interest. But please, gentlemen, see for yourselves.’

Retrieving a vacuum flask from the crate the Porter had brought, Enjolras undid its clasps with a click and a hiss. Water vapour swirled as warm and cold air met, and he congratulated himself on the theatricality lent by mist and the harsh light of the photogram lantern. The Scholars fell silent, half-rising from their seats, craning their sinewed necks, as Enjolras produced a single block of ice from the depths of the flask. It was dark with blood and dirt, but clearly visible nonetheless was a human head, its face a rictus of pain and surprise, its skull bared where the skin and hair had been removed in intricate geometric shapes. The audience recoiled from its bared teeth, crying out at the barbarism of what they saw, and Enjolras allowed a grim smile to settle on his full lips.

‘Dr Grumman was a member of this College!’ cried the Chaplain in indignation, as though that fact should have protected him, or perhaps simply increased the atrocity of his killing.

‘And trepanned too...’ muttered the Sub-Rector, examining the head more closely despite his obvious distress.

The air of the room glowed like a furnace, and Enjolras struck with a clang, sending sparks flying and cutting through the cacophony. ‘Doctor Grumman’s last telegram to Berlin informs us that he was investigating the phenomenon known as Rusakov particles, or Dust.’ He had them now, breathless, frightened and so curious they burned with it, and so he played them like a double-bass: unwieldy, sonorous, and, above all, _rich_. He showed them photograms of humans bathed in light and children whose innocence picked out their silhouettes against the sky, of shuddering curtains of colour and cities in the sky. Grumman’s research had been extensive and the materials he left behind shimmered before the scholarly magpies.

They asked about heresy and bears and politics, and surrendered their gold with nary a complaint. Even the querulous Dean cast his vote in Enjolras’ favour, though not without a parting shot as to the preposterousness of the Many Worlds Theory and the dark suggestion that the photograms of the Aurora and the trembling spires beyond had been an elaborate forgery. Enjolras suppressed a sneer at that. To doubt Dr Grumman’s work but not his death was so very typical of the Dean.

Only the Master and the Librarian watched him with too-knowing eyes.

*******

‘A telegram, Your Grace.’

‘Thank you, brother.’

The young priest shuffled noiselessly out. His departure was barely noticed. Papery, pale hands plucked up the missive to be scanned by pebbly eyes.

_YOUNG LORD HEADED NORTH STOP BACKED BY COLLEGE STOP SUSPECT WORST HERESY STOP_

The Bishop sighed and rose slowly to dictate two further messages to his secretary, to be sent at once to Geneva and to the General Oblation Board. He made certain that the latter could be traced neither to him nor to the Papacy -- maintaining one’s See had always been a matter of knowing whom to champion openly, and whom to facilitate by quieter means. Not that Mrs Coulter herself was particularly quiet, if her frequent requisition of troops, airships and supplies were anything to go by.

That done, he returned to perusing the episcopal records, secure in the knowledge that he had performed his part in the broader tapestry of the divine plan.

A similar ritual was performed in Geneva, where the peace of an office overlooking a lake was shattered by an angry exclamation.

‘If you’ll pardon me for being so bold, I believe Mrs Coulter has ties with the bear-king on Svalbard...’ The young man trailed off, hunched in a half-bow, fearful both of his superior’s rage and of his own temerity in suggesting closer collaboration with one who, soulless yet sentient, could only be a creature of evil. A brute of the truest kind.

‘Thank you.’ The tone was a clear dismissal, hurriedly and gratefully obeyed, but the idea lingered. The Oblation Board was perfectly suited to this task: well-established in the region, possessing its own armed forces, and removed enough from the Church to be able to buy the services of the bears without obligation or taint to itself. He had done enough preemptive penitence to authorise this.

*******

In a softly lit cream-coloured flat in London, Mrs Coulter deposited her gloves and hat on the delicate lacquered hall sideboard. The maid had left the mail in the little silver dish as usual. There were thick cream envelopes -- invitations, no doubt -- a card edged with black, another bore the elaborate crest of the Arctic Institute. Two were unadorned, thin slips of paper that looked like bills, betrayed only by the fact that she never received bills at home.

Ozymandias gathered these two up while she sorted the remainder, and his black nails made short work of the telegrams. Her breath caught as she read them, amazed both by the sweep of Enjolras’ arrogance and ambition, and at the permission she had just been granted. Years and years of work, suddenly accelerated. There would be logistical difficulties, particularly in finding suitable subjects for the programme, but the promise of results almost too good to be dreamt of now lay within her reach. A few more months, perhaps, might suffice.

She would need to make some changes to her schedule for her next visit to the Facility, and she would be able to go sooner than anticipated. It was time to call on Iofur Raknison again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Whitehall** \- For those not familiar with the British political system, a quick note. Whitehall is the nickname, derived from where its HQ is in London, for the Civil Service. This is all the employees, advisers, officials, administrators etc who keep the governmental machinery ticking over and draw up policy. They are by definition politically neutral, are not elected, and generally outlast individual politicians by decades.  
>  **Parliament** \- This is pretty much what it says on the tin. I won't go into the intricacies of the electoral and legislative systems because they're frankly a little weird, but this is where all the elected politicians go. They debate, make sweeping statements and are the front-line of government.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ship’s engines thrummed, lending warmth and a strange intimacy to Enjolras’ small cabin. The sea was calm that day, no rocking to remind him that they were in motion, and no windows by which to gauge their progress. He felt weightless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for how long this has taken me. I could make excuses about real life, and some of them would be true, but really I'm just extremely unreliable. I can't promise you this won't happen again, but I can promise I'm not giving up on the story -- I'm much too attached.
> 
> This is unbetaed, so all mistakes are my own.

The ship’s engines thrummed, lending warmth and a strange intimacy to Enjolras’ small cabin. The sea was calm that day, no rocking to remind him that they were in motion, and no windows by which to gauge their progress. He felt weightless.

‘I _would_ ask you whether you know what you’re getting into...’ Marianne said.

‘And I would tell you that you know as well as I.’

‘They will pursue you without tiring, and their disavowal of the Many Worlds will not stop them from hounding you through every last one of them if they have to,’ she continued, her eyes grave.

‘I know.’

‘And what will you do once we have built our bridge?’

‘I don’t know yet. It rather depends on what we find, doesn’t it?’ He offered her a smile and she returned a snort that might almost have passed for a laugh, her feline mouth pulling across the sound.

‘We will need to seek guidance as well as allies.’

‘Yes. But if Dust was created, then there must be a way of putting an end to it.’

Marianne sighed. ‘It is so perverse of them not to see that our goals align with theirs.’

‘They’re afraid that we might dislodge whatever secrets their dogma has been hiding.’

‘They have good reason to be.’

Her eyes slid shut as Enjolras ran his knuckles over her great head.

‘Enjolras...’ A faint tremor presaging an earthquake rumbled through the barrel of her chest. ‘Enjolras, this is folly.’

‘Are you trying to dissuade me? Now, of all times?’

‘I know better than that. Twenty-seven years and I do not think you have once listened to a word I said. You paid your tutors more mind than you pay me.’

Enjolras said nothing, but his face when she cracked open one eye to stare at him was decidedly amused. She snorted again and flicked her ears.

‘You’ll forgive me?’ he asked eventually, as she continued to level a one-eyed amber glare at him. His mouth still twitched with laughter, unrepentant impudence and love shining in his gaze.

‘Don’t I always? Besides, we are halfway across the ocean by now. If I had really wanted to thwart our little endeavour, I’d have tried it on shore. Water and I are not the best of friends.’

He laughed outright at that, and Marianne rejoiced at the sound.

‘We are too old for such cheap tricks too,’ he added, growing solemn once more. She pressed close in response, her head wedged against his side and purring fiercely. They, like all children, had experimented with their bond, seeing how far it would stretch before their hearts tore at their ribs and the pain became too great to ignore. They had not tried it often.

‘And Marianne, my love?’ he paused long enough for her to butt impatiently at his stomach. ‘You cannot lie to me and tell me you are not excited too.’

He was right, of course, but that did not mean she had to like it.

‘That awful woman, Coulter, is going to get involved,’ she mused after a while.

‘Is there any race at all she doesn’t have a horse in?’

‘We’re the only horse that _isn’t_ hers, Enjolras. And her daemon? I could crush him under one paw, but nothing has ever made me as uneasy as he does.’

‘With any luck, we won’t have to deal with her personally, though I don’t think we can avoid the Oblation Board.’

‘I think you underestimate both her and the Board,’ Marianne warned. ‘They’re only terrified of us because they’ve realised that they can’t bully us or buy us off. Because we’re not trying to shut them down -- they’d know how to deal with us if we were -- but we’re the greatest threat they think they’ve ever faced.’

‘They _over_ estimate their own place in our list of priorities,’ Enjolras replied scathingly.

‘Be that as it may, dismissing them the way you do is dangerous. They will stop at nothing. Their entire organisation is a conduit for Marisa Coulter’s ruthlessness, backed with funding and fanaticism we can only dream of. Our friends and allies are dwindling, Enjolras. I think even the Master of Jordan would have stopped us if he could.’

Her words hit their mark as Enjolras’ expression turned pained. They had grown accustomed to the Master’s support, even when it was entirely tacit, and had come to rely on it. To have him argue so strongly against their greatest work had hurt.

‘Then we will need new friends and allies,’ he resolved. ‘Our message to Ruta Skadi should have reached her by now. She will help us.’

‘She will want answers we don’t have though,’ Marianne said. ‘She will not commit her sisters to some unknown plan.’ The note of warning in her voice grew sharper, and Enjolras felt chastened by her tone, if not her words, though he knew her to be right.

‘Then we will have to explain as best we can, one step at a time,’ he said. It would not be so simple; Ruta Skadi was inclined to immediate judgment, and once resolved she rarely changed her mind.

****

Two days later, Enjolras and Marianne were summoned on deck by shouting. Emerging into the bleak light of high noon in a snow-laden sky, they blinked away the sting of cold until the source of the commotion became apparent. Bare-limbed and daemon-less, a witch stood on the fore-deck, a sprig of cloudpine in one fist and a bow on her back. The sailors were eyeing her with a mixture of horror and hunger that turned what little of their faces was visible under their hoods into grotesque masks. Sighing in irritation, man and lioness stalked past the sailors until they were within earshot of the witch over the cry of the wind and the crashing of the waves.

‘Queen Ruta Skadi sends her greetings, Lord Enjolras,’ she declared in a high, clear voice. ‘She bade me give you this.’

Seemingly from nowhere, the witch produced a small sprig of cloudpine and a single, curved fang. The green of the pine lay stark against her palm, while the ivory of the tooth almost vanished in the pallor of the air and her skin. She did not stretch her arm, did not reach to Enjolras, but waited with mocking mirth in her eyes from him to approach.

The sailors muttered and a few fingered amulets. It was clear they thought this a trap, and that only the hierarchy aboard the ship prevented them from advising Enjolras not to take the bait, or even from trying to grab hold of him as he passed.

He ignored them all. His footsteps rang through the ship’s hull as he stepped forward to accept Ruta Skadi’s gift. The tooth dropped heavy into his hand and he felt its preserved sharpness -- how very like the clan-queen it was to wear so deadly a crown. He wondered whether she had yet replaced the gap this tooth had left in it.

‘I cannot stay -- there is talk of war -- but Ruta Skadi will help you if it is in her power to do so. Use these and she will be able to find you,’ the witch said, sounding solemn but still with humour in her eyes. He had passed her test, and a smile played about the corner of her lips, the same shape as her bow and no doubt just as deadly.

‘Thank you --’ Enjolras began, then hesitated, realising that he did not know her name.

‘Naur Rakastettu,’ she supplied with a laugh wild as the snowstorm. ‘I think we will meet again, you and I. My Queen speaks highly of you.’

‘Wait!’ he called, and she halted, surprised perhaps at his impudence, and challenging him to justify it. ‘You see and know everything. You must have heard something of those we call the Oblation Board.’

Her face tightened and her mouth went thin and angry. Enjolras was almost sorry he had asked, and Marianne bristled, readying for a threat.

‘They are building something. We do not yet know what, only that they have not waited for it to be finished. There is evil there...’ she trailed off and shook her head. ‘There is evil too great to be spoken, but it taints the ground and the air for miles around. We will not go near it.’

‘You must know something,’ he pressed.

She whirled on him from where she had turned to fly, and for the first time since he had walked out on deck, he was frightened of what she might do.

‘We know nothing. My Queen and my clan have other matters to attend to, and you would do best to avoid the place as well.’

Her teeth bared, she sprang onto her cloudpine branch, vanishing into thick air amidst the cries of startled birds. Enjolras watched her go with a frown, and one of the sailors would later swear that the low growl he heard came not from the lioness, but from the man himself. He was, of course, sensible to the honour Ruta Skadi did him in sending one of her own at a time of war, and he would undoubtedly be dependent on her support, but all the planning in this world -- and perhaps the next -- would be for nought if the Oblation Board, operating in secrecy, were able to outmanoeuvre him because he did not know what they were doing.

Enjolras stalked back below deck, leaving softly cursing and dumbfounded sailors scattered like pebbles in his wake. Behind him, the quartermaster hurled invectives and the human mechanics of the ship ker-chunked into motion once more.

****

No sooner had they made shore in Lapland than his master sent Thorold into the town with a detailed list of purchases and an exhortation to the utmost discretion. The supplies were nothing he had not seen or indeed bought before, standard gear for any travel through the forests and beyond. Furs they already had from their last expedition, but there were additional ones to be purchased, and replacements and repairs for those too worn to be used. The foodstuffs were more of a puzzle. The volume of supplies looked too high to be right, only Lord Enjolras had been meticulously consistent about it, and he was not given to such mistakes. There would be hell to pay if Thorold took it upon himself to change one iota of the plan.

There were other strange sundries too. Odds and ends such as fishing tackle, easily found in a port like Trollesund, but of little use in the wastes further North. An anbarogenerator large enough to necessitate a bigger sled than any previous trip had warranted. Weapons.

It was folly, of course, to venture far outside of Trollesund unarmed: there were Tartars, and groups of nomadic hunters who were more often hostile than friendly, even wolves. Further north, the cliff ghasts built their domain, feasting off the talking foxes, or so it was said. Beyond the sea, half frozen this time of year, lay Svalbard, and the most fearsome threats of all. Mercenaries they might be, human-like in their ability to exchange services for currency, they were _bears_ and it just wasn’t right for them to be running around, talking and wearing armour like it was clothing.

The sun dropped quickly towards the horizon and the air bit sharper. Thorold hurried his steps while his daemon recited the list.

‘We’re still missing fuel for the generator,’ she said, not quite fretting. ‘And we have to go see the merchant again tomorrow about the tinned fruit.’

He hummed his agreement and rearranged his plans for the next day. Lord Enjolras would not be pleased at the delay, but it could not be helped. The young master had never been patient, less so even than most of his rank, and with a different kind of impatience too. Wealthy young men who had never had to ask for anything twice had boredom or petulance. Lord Enjolras… It was difficult to say what he had. Thorold had never been able to explain it to himself, and had never had to explain it to Aine. There were no others with whom he would dream of discussing the matter either; his Lordship kept no other servants save a cook, who had no interest in gossip, and although manservants spoke among themselves about their masters, Thorold’s sense of propriety would not permit him to discuss Lord Enjolras’ particular brand of impatience at their gatherings.

He had been distracted, that was how he explained it to himself later, and in his distraction he allowed himself to think he was somewhere civilised, where pedestrians knew how to avoid each other seamlessly. It was why he was quite unprepared for the sudden impact as a large man barrelled into him, going the way Thorold had just come.

‘Excuse me!’ he exclaimed.

‘It’s alright,’ the man responded, in heavily accented English.

The nerve of this man! Thorold was incensed. That he should be so ignorant -- but no, allowances had to be made in these strange parts. He was so caught up in his indignation that he almost missed the obvious. The boorish stranger was carrying an alarmingly large haunch of meat and a cask of what, from the stench, appeared to be raw spirits. The man shook the jar, having caught him staring, so that the liquid sloshed and the smell grew even stronger. Thorold nearly gagged.

‘What in the name of --?’

The man gave him a scornful, amused look.

‘For the bear, you know,’ he said, waving the cask even more and clearly deriving some sick amusement from Thorold’s discomfort.

‘Bear?’ Thorold asked, alarmed.

The man merely grunted in response, before casting an eye to the sky, grunting and hurrying off without another word. Aine sniffed as Thorold brushed the flecks of the encounter off the shoulders of his coat and rallied himself again.

His master, however, was less willing to shrug his shoulders and press on. On returning to Lord Enjolras’ lodgings, Thorold was greeted with the sight of his Lordship pacing, deep in angry conversation with Marianne, who lay motionless by the heating unit.

‘... quite unreasonable,’ Enjolras was saying.

‘Maybe, but he _is_ Sisselman, and there’s nothing to be done about it, not without burning every bridge we have here. That bear is a criminal,’ came the reply.

Thorold knocked loudly, re-announcing his presence, as years of training prevented him from fidgeting at having walked in on a conversation between his Lordship and his daemon.

‘Thorold! What took you so long?’

‘My apologies --’ he began, but Lord Enjolras cut him off.

‘Nevermind. There’s no time. We must either obtain the services of the local bear and leave, or we must leave. Either way, prepare the sleds for departure at first light.’

‘My Lord --’

‘Not now, Thorold. Unless it’s vital?’ Impatience bled into every word, so Thorold swallowed his misgivings and banished the smell of the meat and the spirits from his mind. He quite forgot about the tinned fruit.

‘No, my Lord. Very well.’

He bowed and withdrew, Aine tucked nervously against his heels. Lord Enjolras had a habit of getting what he wanted, and if he had truly set his mind on hiring the bear… Well, Thorold could only hope he was not expected to provide enough food for some daemonless armoured creature as well.

****

Thorold shivered through the dawn, despite his furs. This time of year, even a town as southern as Trollesund never got ink-dark, but that never helped take the cold sting out of those first few minutes of the day. Yet he was happy, humming as he checked and rechecked the dogs’ harnesses and the straps that secured their supplies. There was no bear. He had stopped casting furtive glances over his shoulder some ten minutes earlier, finally convinced that the monstrous armoured shape would not suddenly emerge from between the low cabins and warehouses on the edge of Trollesund.

His master was less thrilled at this development. He paced angrily, stopping to tighten buckles Thorold had just tended to and to take readings from his instruments. Thorold continued with his own tasks, schooling his demeanor so that it expressed an immediate readiness to assist should Lord Enjolras require it, while also giving the impression he had not noticed his master’s behaviour at all.

While his head was bowed over a recalcitrant crate of ammunition, Thorold heard the distinctive snap of his master’s pocket watch being forcefully shut. Time to go, then. He straightened, just as Lord Enjolras spoke.

‘Start the dogs, Thorold. We can’t linger here.’

Almost falling over themselves in their eagerness, snapping at each others’ heels and howling, the dogs jumped in their traces at the sound of Thorold’s voice, and the whole creaking edifice of sled, supplies and men started down the snow-covered road out of Trollesund and into the purple morning.

****

The landscape never changed. There were days that stretched for years amid the swish of pines that flew by, and the creak of the snow, and the panting of the dogs. There were short, purple-tinted nights torn open by the cascading lights of the Aurora, when Enjolras would rush about, fighting against the wind and the half-light and the layers of ice that formed on everything to take readings of the sky. The data was poor, inconclusive and hastily gathered, but it was better than nothing, and he would need every scrap of information he could get, since so little of his predecessors’ raw findings had survived their excommunications.

It was two weeks before the shadows among the trees became larger and more purposeful than foxes and the occasional elk -- or had they been there all along, hidden and silent despite their bulk? Even Marianne, with the eyes of a predator, never saw more of them than the occasional ghost, matching the pace of the sled, never nearing.

Panserbjørn.

‘They have us surrounded,’ she told Enjolras one night, as he peered at his instruments.

‘I know.’

Thorold shifted uneasily by the anbar-powered stove over which he was cooking their food. Enjolras spared him a quelling glance.

‘If they had wanted to kill us, we’d be dead already,’ he said, raising his voice for his manservant to hear. Thorold bent over the pot again, embarrassed maybe at his own transparence, but did not look much comforted.

‘The real question,’ Enjolras continued, speaking only to Marianne, ‘is whether they’re accompanying us, or herding us.’

‘Only one way to find out,’ she replied, seeming to glow as another curtain of green light poured down from the sky.

In the morning, Enjolras called the dogs to order and sent them hurtling forward in their traces along a new course, several degrees further north than planned. By noon, they had seen nothing of the bears and Enjolras’ throat felt tighter than he could blame on the bite of the air.

‘This doesn’t mean anything yet,’ Marianne said, her tail thumping rhythmically against his leg. He breathed in time with its slow beats and accepted the truth of her words. They had gone entire days between sighting one of the Panserbjørn, and they had always returned -- always been there. It was too early to assume the worst. Night fell later as the days wore on towards midsummer, and with the encroaching dusk, the first white shadows ghosted once more between the trees. Enjolras breathed easier.

‘Did they send them or did she?’ Marianne asked, and he could only shrug. There was no telling where Marisa Coulter ended and the Magisterium began, or who was more likely to hang him before asking questions. Short-sighted fools, the lot of them, too preoccupied with burying all knowledge of elemental particles to contemplate the possibility of stopping them at their source.

They continued on their new course another two days before Thorold addressed Lord Enjolras to do more than ask about their trajectory or their dinner.

‘My Lord, your witch… You mentioned...’ he trailed off, uncomfortable at his own boldness, and Enjolras twitched a smile at the man who had watched him grow up and who had made a pig’s ear of attempting to mix the reserve of the manservant and the care of a parent.

‘She will not be back for as long as the Panserbjørne are following us,’ Enjolras said. ‘Ruta Skadi’s clan had an agreement of sorts with the previous king of Svalbard, but he is dead and whatever entente they had is gone.’

‘I see. Thank you, my Lord.’ He turned back to unloading their bivouac from the sled.

‘This is going to be a problem, isn’t it?’ Marianne asked in an undertone.

‘Probably. It rather depends on what the new king plans for us,’ Enjolras replied.

They fell silent, ate in the small circle of light thrown by their camp, a golden enclave in an endless monochromatic forest, and Enjolras thought he could almost hear the soft breathing and huge paws of the Panserbjørne who kept guard more surely than any regiment of Tartars, waiting on some unknown signal.

The travellers reached the treeline in this fashion, unmolested but strung too tight from constant observation. As the pines fell away, ceding their place to smaller, hardier shrubs and then to blank nothingness that stretched into a blank sky, the bears too emerged. Huge, they were only visible because of their proximity -- outlines of thick, faintly yellow fur, with black slashes for their mouths and eyes and claws. And, of course, their armour, in articulated sheets of expert craftsmanship, that cut out their silhouettes more starkly than any splash of colour could.

Fanning out, the Panserbjørne flanked the sled, which came to a juddering halt as the dogs -- nervous from weeks of smelling an unseen threat -- panicked and tangled themselves in the traces. They howled, whined, growled and barked themselves into a frenzy which no amount of shouting from Thorold seemed able to quell. Into the chaos of noise, louder than anything had been since they left Trollesund, the leader of the bear platoon stepped forward.

‘Lord Enjolras, at the behest of Iofur Raknison, King of Svalbard and Lord of the Panserbjørne, I am here to effect your arrest. Come quietly, and neither you nor your companion will be harmed.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Enjolras saw Thorold’s hands tighten around his rifle. ‘We accept,’ he said, sounding rushed to his own ears, but better that than Thorold throw his life away needlessly.

‘Very well,’ the bear said. He glanced at the sled, the dogs, the piles of stores and equipment, before seeming to come to a decision. ‘You will follow us.’

So saying, he turned and called an order to the others, who tightened their loose formation around the travellers. The dogs howled more loudly than before, showing their hackles and lurching every which way in their traces, but Thorold’s efforts with them finally bore fruit, and at a few cracks of the whip through the air, they fell back in line, whining and sullen. What an odd picture they must make from the air, should anyone be watching: the prisoner with an honour guard of bears. The menace of their presence was near-palpable, but abstract. They did not threaten, they displayed no anger. They merely walked, with that strange lilting gait, through the snow, knowing that there would be no escape.

‘Implacable,’ Marianne supplied softly, ‘that’s what they are. Implacable.’

She wanted to say more, and Enjolras could feel the space of her words burning a hole through his mind, but there would be a time and place for that later, once they were out of earshot. The bears would not relay the conversations of their prisoners unless it was in their interests, but if the Magisterium was indeed behind this as Enjolras suspected, its agents would press Iofur Raknison for every last scrap of information they could. Thorold too was a humming mass of unsaid words and worry. He ignored them both, focusing instead on keeping the dogs in line, one paw behind the other as they reluctantly followed the armoured ghost ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me and my co-conspirator over on tumblr at [at-heart-a-gentleman](http://at-heart-a-gentleman.tumblr.com) and [queer-brienne](http://queer-brienne.tumblr.com).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Bow before me,’ Iofur Raknison said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which this continues to be the slowest updating fic in history.
> 
> The usual thanks to Sian and Maddi for their support and ideas and help, and an additional thanks to Theriza for perking up at the idea of this fic and inadvertently galvanising me to finish editing this chapter.

The bears set a relentless pace, keeping the low mountains always to their left. They steered their course by the land and the sky, without the use of instruments, though the quality and craftsmanship of their armour suggested them more than capable of building navigation devices. They set out early each day, and made camp late, seemed hardly to eat, and moved as though the weight of their armour were nothing. They even slept fully armoured, still surrounding him, while one kept watch, his black eyes hard and bright and entirely inhuman. During the day, the yowling of the pack and the skill required to steer the sleds prevented Enjolras from asking questions. After the first night, when his questions and indignation were met with stony, expressionless silence, he stopped asking.

Instead, he observed. A few facts were apparent: first, they were heading east-by-northeast, judging from the landscape and his own neglected instruments. Second, the bears did not expect the journey to last much longer, or they would spare the sled-team, who were fast nearing exhaustion. The sea, by his calculations -- performed in the dead hours of the night under the watchful eyes of Marianne and a single guard -- was about as far as the dogs would last. Third, the platoon had known exactly where to find him in the midst of the forest, suggesting witch involvement. Fourth, the Panserbjørne were mercenaries, hiring out their strength and cunning to the highest bidder, and a little guesswork furnished the highest bidder of them all: the Magisterium.

_Eo ipso_.

The Magisterium was having him conveyed to Svalbard.

It was almost flattering, to be thought of as so dangerous by the most powerful organisation in this world. This was meagre consolation, however. Although he would be well-treated, and promptly released should the political winds turn in his favour once more, he would struggle to complete his work on that God-forsaken rock. Enjolras’ mood turned foul, and he brushed off Thorold’s anxious questioning with increasing brusqueness until the old manservant, cloaked in his frost-brittled dignity, gave up and retreated into unhappy silence.

When the fog lifted in the early hours of the fifth morning to reveal grey rocks, a grey sky and the grey sea -- lapping iron-plated at the jagged shore -- and the ship, grey too, it was almost a relief.

The sergeant of the Panserbjørne reared up and roared, sending terns careening into the air in alarm. An answering signal flag was hoisted on the ship, and moments later, a boat was lowered to nose at the waterline. Three Tartar soldiers and their wolf daemons leapt ashore, pointing rifles at Enjolras and Thorold, who both raised their hands. It was difficult to tell, but Enjolras thought the bears seemed almost insulted by the Tartars’ appraisal of their ability to keep their prisoners under control. He and Thorold were prodded and dragged until their new captors realised they would come quietly, and were thus shepherded into the rocking boat.

The bears did not follow them. Enjolras watched as one cut the traces that tied his dogs to the sled, and then growled at the frightened and confused animals until they sloped off as a pack. Their chances of survival were slim, but they might just find enough food to make it to some encampment, where they would be rounded up and put to use. It was common knowledge among Brytish explorers and travellers that although unexplained sled-dog packs were a clear sign some traveller had met with an accident, few were inclined to act on that knowledge. The Magisterium had no reason to suppose anybody would come looking for him on account of a few sons-of-wolves turned loose.

Having done so, one by one, each armoured bear slipped into the water and swam alongside the boat as it regained the ship. Enjolras watched them until the craft was winched onto the main deck and they were lost to his sight.

‘This way, Lord Enjolras.’ The man’s epaulettes denoted him a captain of the Tartars, his clipped tones only drawing attention to the unexpected youthfulness of his face. He did not smile. He turned smartly and in perfect tandem with his daemon, and frogmarched man and lioness below deck, to a small windowless cabin. In an odd show of solicitousness, he took Enjolras’ heavy, reeking furs from him, assisting him when the cramped conditions made it difficult to remove the thickest garments. Marianne watched him, distrust plain in her eyes, guessing faster than Enjolras had that depriving him of his outdoor clothing was just as effective a prison as the lock the captain made sure to shut when he left.

‘Well this is something of an inconvenience,’ Enjolras commented.

Marianne paused in her prowling to glare at him, before resuming the pad-pad-pad-swish that took her from one end of the cramped cabin to the other.

‘They don’t mean to kill us, Marianne.’

The ensuing pause was longer, more thoughtful.

‘Unless we find some way to pursue our work, they might as well.’

****

The Tartars’ impeccable discipline became Enjolras’ only means of keeping time. He counted two days by their footfalls outside his door and the meals they brought him, then someone rapped sharply on his door and opened it immediately. It was the captain who had escorted him aboard, followed by an orderly carrying Enjolras’ furs. They watched in silence as he dressed himself in them, before binding his hands and placing a blindfold across his eyes. Marianne growled but remained pressed close to Enjolras’ side so he could sink his fingers into her mane. She guided him as they were led outside, the shock of cold air momentarily robbing them both of breath.

‘This way,’ the captain said.

He took a few more steps, every nerve straining against the darkness, his knuckles painfully tight, but keeping each step calm, measured. Controlled.

‘Gangplank,’ Marianne murmured, and he changed his tread accordingly, felt the give under the soles of his boots as the length of wood and metal bent under the combined weight of men, wolves and lioness. The wind tore at them, masking the creak of the ship and the voices of the guards, so he walked with only the rushing in his ears and the phantom sense of Marianne’s fur through his gloves.

‘Land now,’ she said, and then there was compacted snow under his feet. She stopped abruptly, and Enjolras came to a halt beside her, understanding only when he eased a foot forward and encountered rock. Hands brushed the back of his head and he stiffened, then he was blinking as snow and light blinded him almost as effectively as the scrap of dark fabric had.

The bears stood arrayed before him -- their numbers swelled, though he recognised their leader from his earlier escort. One pulled a sort of travois behind him, strapped to his shoulders, large enough to fit two people and their daemons. The gangplank behind him thudded and rumbled, disgorging Thorold before the Tartars drew it back aboard the ship. The isolation was suddenly too immense.

‘This way, Lord Enjolras,’ one of the bears said, cutting the bonds from his wrists. It was all anyone seemed to say anymore.

Still squinting against the snow, Enjolras climbed aboard the travois, Thorold close on his heels. The bear watched as Enjolras arranged the fur he found around himself and Thorold, then gave an order, and the convoy lurched forward, navigating a path between the rocks. Enjolras stared out into the whirling snow, his face warding off any attempt at conversation Thorold might have made. The bears had not blindfolded him. Even now they did not need him to drive the dogs as they had done, they had left him his sight. Pondering why at least gave him something to do.

Marianne was the first to understand.

‘They were doing it to control me,’ she said quietly, and Enjolras’ hand tightened where it was still curled into her mane. As long as he was blind and bound, the lioness would not risk anything -- would not unleash her snarling rage on the wolf daemons of the Tartars. Oh, the wolves would prevail, but a commander knows when to make sacrifices and when to preserve lives. The bears on the other hand… Well it was no matter to a Panserbjørne to touch a person’s daemon, to kill a daemon. Marianne’s claws and teeth would glance off their armour, and they would crush her without a qualm. They had nothing to fear from her, so it brought them no benefit to blindfold or manacle him.

Thus were they conveyed to the fortress of Iofur Raknison, King of Svalbard.

****

Iofur Raknison sat on his marble throne and attempted to cross his hind legs. With deliberate motion, he arranged his ankle across his knee before leaning back and surveying the hall. His bears stood to rigid attention at the door, but only a few courtiers lined the walls. No matter -- they would flock soon enough, when the platoon returned and the new prisoner was brought before the king. Bears could learn curiosity.

He waited. Time passed. Iofur Raknison watched the terns swoop and call among the struts that held up the hall’s ceiling. He would instruct a bear with a miniature fire hurler to purge them soon -- once Lord Enjolras had been seen to. Messages to Svalbard were few and far between, but the zeppelin from what the Lady Coulter referred to only as the Board was regular enough. The last envoy had been very specific about Lord Enjolras, agitated, repeating his missive over and over, as though unsure it had been received. Nothing like the Lady Coulter herself.

Prisoners came and went on Svalbard; they always had and they always would. They were human and fragile and often loud and busy, professing to doubt the evidence of their own eyes, disclaiming all knowledge of how they came to be captives. Iofur Raknison’s predecessors had paid them little mind. They had been wrong. The intelligence of a bear was vastly superior to that of a human of course -- bears, after all, could not be tricked -- but there was much to be learned from their ambition.

The hall’s door swung open and a bear came through, rearing up onto his hind legs before bowing so low the plume on his faceplate brushed the ground.

‘Iofur Raknison, the prisoner is here,’ he said.

‘Bring him to me,’ Iofur Raknison replied.

The bear bowed again as he left, and satisfaction settled deep inside Iofur Raknison’s gut. The Panserbjørne were ancient, and thought of themselves as slow-moving as the glaciers that ringed their island-fortress. But just like ice, they could be shaped.

A tern screeched and he snarled, causing it to wheel in greater alarm until it escaped through one of the high windows. He watched it go, then turned his attention to the door once again, slumping further into his throne, his chainmail rattling against the marble, draping around him like so many folds of water.

_This Lord Enjolras is small_ , thought Iofur Raknison, when the prisoner entered, flanked by two bears. Even bundled in thick furs, he was slight, almost insubstantial, child-like in how dwarfed he was by his escort. Iofur Raknison had not seen a live human child, but the photograms he had been shown were sufficient to see the resemblance. Lord Enjolras must be very young, and the bear-king idly wondered how one so poor in years could be worth the money the Board was paying for his captivity. All this passed through his head as he looked in silence at the small man and the large... whatever creature Lord Enjolras' soul-form was.

‘Bow before me,’ Iofur Raknison said.

****

The bear-king’s words echoed in his confection of a great hall, whose cornices and mouldings seemed to melt together and run down the walls like spoiled icing, as Enjolras considered his options. It was not in his nature to bow, but he had learned to curb his nature, to bend his iron soul in the furnace of his heart, knowing that he would be able to reshape it once the danger was past.

He bowed, as Iofur Raknison’s paw dripped oily golden light from gilded claws, and the birds left their droppings on his castle. A sense of wrongness lodged itself deep inside Enjolras’ chest. He could not pinpoint it, but it ran stronger and broader than any fear or unease at his capture, or even at the shadowy forces that had orchestrated it.

‘Welcome to Svalbard, Lord Enjolras,’ Iofur Raknison said. ‘You are a prisoner, but you need not fear. My subjects will not harm you.’

A pause followed, and Enjolras nodded his head to show he understood, but held his tongue. The bear stared at him, and he stared back. Iofur Raknison was the first to break the silence again.

‘A cell has been fitted out for you. You will find it comfortable.’

His speech was stilted, the phrases of the Brytish elite sounding heavy and clumsy on his tongue, and Enjolras frowned into his furs as Marianne shifted beside him. The feeling of wrongness stirred again.

‘You have been specially recommended to our care, Lord Enjolras. I shall see my charge carried through,’ the king continued, apparently oblivious.

There was something of pride in his voice that Enjolras carefully logged for future contemplation. The Panserbjørne had long kept prisoners for the world’s rulers. They had done it for money and because they could, but their dispassion was famous. Human governments came and went, and the bears never showed a sign of caring, and accepted coin from whoever could best pay. If they took pride in their work it was only in their steadfastness, never in their solicitousness -- a hundred years of reports were unanimous on this.

‘Well?’ Iofur Raknison demanded.

‘We are grateful, Your Majesty,’ Marianne replied for them both.

The king stared at them for a long time, then nodded, apparently satisfied with their answer.

‘Take them away,’ he commanded.

Their guards rematerialised at Enjolras’ shoulders and steered them from the room. They followed a series of corridors and passages which he and Marianne attempted to commit to memory, but that left them both bewildered and turned around. At last, they came to a jangling halt in front of a wooden door, dark and warped with age, with only with a small barred opening. One of the bears removed a set of keys from a belt and then both his escort pushed it open. Lord Enjolras started; the wood did not look thick enough to warrant such effort, so either the warping was more extensive than he could see, or the door had been lined for added security.

_They have gone to a lot of trouble_ , he thought, and Marianne’s rumble against his thigh echoed him.

‘Please inform us if you need anything,’ one of the bears said, ushering Enjolras into his new quarters. It sounded rehearsed, even more so than Iofur Raknison’s carefully affected mannerisms.

Then the door shut behind the Panserbjørne, and Enjolras and Marianne stood in the darkness of the cell. The only light came from the door and from a single, narrow window, set high into the thick wall. He could not see from the ground what it overlooked, and it too was barred. The corner was occupied by a bedframe, spartan but clearly new, and furnished with a real mattress and covers. The other corner held meagre toilet and washing arrangements, and through the gloom, Enjolras thought he perceived a curtain that could be drawn to separate those facilities from the rest of the space. The remaining furniture was made up of a single chair and some empty shelves. Strewn on the floor, some straw helped insulate the room from the chill of its own floor.

‘The straw is dry,’ said Marianne. She scratched carefully at it, testing the underlying stone with her paw before covering it again. ‘As is the floor. It may be cold, but everything is dry.’

Enjolras swayed where he stood as the tension that held him upright eased a little. Marianne was by his side to catch him, and he pressed his hand into her mane again, wishing fervently that he could take off his gloves and feel the reassurance of her coat. By a series of nudges, she coaxed him towards the bed and then toppled him onto it with a judicious headbutt. Enjolras didn’t fight her, and instead let her pull the covers out from under him before she leapt up onto the mattress herself. The bedframe creaked but held, and she settled around him, each breath pushing her flank closer to his, her head pressed against his throat.

They had slept like this as children, when she would curl against him in some cub-form and they would breathe in tandem. Already, he could feel his breath matching hers, the familiarity of it like a blanket. Slowly, so as not to dislodge her, he pulled the covers over both of them and closed his eyes. His mind would not settle, but it had been dragged to a halt by the sheer exhaustion of his body, and, his weariness having caught him at last, he surrendered to its embrace.

****

When Enjolras awoke, he was beatifically warm. For a few seconds, he soaked in the sensation, before he stiffened in horror, nearly dislodging Marianne who still rumbled against his chest. He was in the deepest wilds of the North, where such warmth could mean only death, a comforting illusion of heat before his body gave out. He wrenched his eyes open, expecting a blank sky and endless snow punctuated only by their sled, and was momentarily too bewildered to process what he was seeing. Awareness returned drip by drip, and the grey above him resolved itself from sky to ceiling, the warmth to the combined effect of blankets and sleeping lioness. There was a bed beneath him. He was a prisoner on Svalbard, the key all but thrown away by the act of his exile. But he was not dying of exposure in some frozen forest, and that knowledge caused a surge of optimism to rush through him.

He moved, trying to shift as slowly and quietly as he could, but the attempt was met with a gust of cold that had him returning to his original position before he could make a conscious decision. The suddenness of these dual sensations woke Marianne, who yawned in his face and blinked at their surroundings.

‘How long have we slept?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t seem any darker or lighter to me than when we arrived, but your eyes are better than mine.’

She raised her muzzle and squinted intently at the window for a moment, before pronouncing her verdict.

‘Maybe a little lighter, but I could be imagining it. I don’t suppose it matters much anyhow.’

‘Are we counting days in mealtimes from now on?’ he rejoined, only half-joking.

The expected dismissal did not come, and Enjolras craned his neck to peer at Marianne, disheartened by the weight of her silence.

‘Maybe. But did something seem strange, in that hall?’ she eventually answered.

‘Do you know what it was?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘but I propose we find out.’

He hummed his agreement and she purred in satisfaction.

‘He has not been king long, has he?’ he mused after a short while.

‘Less than a year.’

He hummed again, more thoughtfully. The politics of Svalbard were, as a rule, beyond the scope of Whitehall’s expertise, or indeed its concern. As long as the island fortress was still available for a price -- and it always was -- Brytish politicians saw little benefit in following its power struggles and rivalries. They were only bears, after all. Their succession seemed largely linear, and occasionally they shed each other’s blood on the snow for title to a remote rock. Their external loyalties never seemed to change, in that they could always be bought.

Iofur Raknison was different though.

‘The Palmerian Professor had some theory, didn’t he?’ he asked.

It was Marianne’s turn to hum in response. The sound vibrated right through him.

‘Something about Raknison’s ascension -- very irregular, something like that -- and trying to change Panserbjørne culture. He has a paper brewing, I think, about the, how did he put it? _Tensions and inevitable counter-movement_ , only probably more polemical,’ he continued.

‘From his extensive experience, I’m sure,’ Marianne said, her tone derisive. ‘They would never make it as far as Trollesund.’

‘Give me strength to protect academia from itself and the world from academics, and Trelawney especially,’ Enjolras groused, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. It was spidered with hair-thin cracks in the rough coating of grey paint over grey stone.

They fell silent, and Enjolras’ eyelids drooped with still bone-deep tiredness, but his mind was too awake to let him sleep again. They drifted on the near shores of slumber until the door creaked open and he shot bolt upright, heedless of the sudden cold as the blankets pooled at his waist. A bear, wearing only a backplate and a throat-guard, stepped through, carrying a still steaming bowl. This he placed on the set of shelves, before disappearing.

The door did not close, however, and the guard soon returned with a brazier. He set it in the middle of the room and lit it with a small tinderbox he carried in his other paw. Deep in the bowels of the brazier, the flame caught, and soon the room began to smell of burning seal tallow. It was oppressive, cloying, and filled the chimney-less room with a faintly dirty-looking miasma. The bear sat back on his haunches and carefully shut the stove’s door, flicking the lock with a deft claw. He cast a glance at Enjolras, and left again, taking the tinderbox with him.

As soon as he was gone and their cell closed off once more, Enjolras stood and fetched the food from the shelves. Too wrapped up in their musings, he had not noticed his hunger until food was within reach. It was fish -- of course it was fish -- but it was hot, and in that moment it tasted better than any feast Enjolras had ever enjoyed in London or Oxford. He burned the roof of his mouth in his haste, and scraped the bowl with the spoon to ensure he caught every last drop and morsel.

Once he had finished eating, he rose slowly, his joints still stiff, and grabbed the edge of the bed. Marianne leapt from it and lent her weight by pressing her shoulder to the far side of the frame, and between them they pushed and pulled until it rested as close to the brazier as they could manage without setting it on fire.

Perhaps they should have taken longer to move the bed, Enjolras thought, savoured it even, prolonged the moments before their sudden awareness of their own idleness would leave them reeling. He and Marianne shared a bewildered glance as he sat down and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, sweating a little from the exertion under his furs.

‘We can’t stay here,’ she said softly.

He nodded, folding himself into the residual warmth of the bed and staring into the blank metal of the stove’s side. There seemed nothing to do but sleep again, his traitorous body already yearning for it, but he fought against it and against the knowledge, dark as the Northern winter, that there was nothing more useful to be done.

****

Enjolras had no memory of sleeping, but he woke abruptly at the creaking of his cell door as the bear returned. The smell of food assaulted his senses moments later and he found he was ravenous.

‘How long have I been here?’ he croaked.

The bear turned and seemed to confer a moment, presumably with a second guard outside, before fixing an unreadable glare on Enjolras.

‘Four days, Lord Enjolras.’

Four days. Far longer than he had anticipated, each precious second ticking him further from his goals, and his enemies closer. He snarled in frustration and leaped up to pace, only to find that his knees gave out and his legs would not hold him. He stumbled and managed to fall back onto the bed rather than the floor, Marianne instantly at his side to paw at him in concern. Enjolras made to swat her away but held back when he saw how dull her fur and eyes looked, and it was all he could do to keep the bile from rising in his throat.

The guard lumbered forward and deposited another bowl of unidentifiable, fish-scented food in Enjolras’ limp hands.

‘You must eat,’ he said simply.

Enjolras stared at it, watching as steam rose from the surface of what might charitably be described as stew. There appeared to be a lump of seal fat floating in it and slowly melting, and Enjolras knew that he should eat that before it disappeared. It would give him strength, and would taste better than any of the rest.

He scooped it out though the spoon trembled in his fingers, clattering against the side of the bowl. The sound was painfully loud, and the blubber on his tongue was so rich he could barely chew it. He fared little better with the rest of the food, as his appetite deserted him despite his hunger. Enjolras finished it by sheer force of will, drawing strength from Marianne, who nipped at his calf every time he made to set the bowl aside. She growled low approval once the last of the food was gone, but her voice lacked its usual power.

After that, he slept fitfully, waking at nothings, at strange shadows in the corners of his eye, at Marianne twitching a paw against him in their uneasy dreams. He tossed, the blankets by turns oppressively heavy and too flimsy, but always sweat-soaked and clinging to his skin. He was aware, as though underwater, that he was sick.

It took the bears a further two days, and being spoken to directly by Marianne, to reach the same conclusion. Enjolras' cell became a flurry of activity, if the movements of Panserbjørne can ever resemble a flurry. He was not privy to their conversations, but it seemed to Enjolras that they were almost concerned, if only to the extent of his value to them, both present and perhaps future. One of his guards was tasked with spoonfeeding him when his own hands grew too weak, and he thought that the taste of the food had improved too, although his fever-distorted senses could hardly be trusted.

And for a while, it appeared that Enjolras was making a good recovery. He was able to sit, to eat and converse, and Marianne regained some of her fire. The bears talked among themselves and watched him with assessing eyes, tracking each sign of his recovery, until one day -- Enjolras had lost count how many, but it felt too long already -- one of them strayed from the usual script of admonishing him about his lack of appetite.

‘His Majesty has sent for you,’ the guard said.

Enjolras’ knees shook at the first hint of weight on his legs, and he clutched the edge of the bedframe, forced into slowness. Standing for the first time in at least a week, and he would have to face Iofur Raknison, who would catalogue any show of weakness. Marianne growled, and pressed herself against Enjolras in support, but nearly caused him to overbalance. He clenched his teeth and stoked his anger, rushing it through his veins until it let him stand and hold his head high. Each step felt more secure than the one before as he followed the bear out of the cell, into a corridor that felt almost vast despite its narrowness, unbounded by the four walls of his prison.

The light grew in increments, but Enjolras was still dazzled by the open whiteness of Iofur Raknison’s throne room. As before, the King perched on his throne, the sheer massiveness of the marble raising it from grotesque to sublime.

‘Lord Enjolras.’

The bear-king’s voice rang in the cavernous space.

‘Your Majesty.’

‘Come.’

Enjolras stepped forward, concentrating on each motion so that his legs would not tremble nor his feet falter.

‘My bears tell me you have been sick.’

It was not a question, and Enjolras did not answer.

‘Bears do not get sick,’ Iofur Raknison continued. ‘Not the way you humans seem to.’

‘We cannot all be blessed with the strength and resilience of the Panserbjørne,’ Enjolras offered, the barest hint of flattery, a toe dipped into shark-teeming waters.

‘No, you cannot.’ That was discouraging, but not an abject failure. ‘You must not die.'

‘I seem to be improving, Your Majesty,’ Enjolras answered, feeling Marianne’s hackles rise with their shared uneasiness.

‘Yes. What is it you need?'

Enjolras and Marianne shared a glance, and he allowed himself the barest of smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Please come say hi to Maddi and me (at-heart-a-gentleman), and leave your feedback. We're slightly floundering in the dark with this, but we're also super-excited, so we hope you like it too.
> 
> You should also check out Maddi's wonderful art, which is all tagged Enjolriel
> 
> http://suchbluesky.tumblr.com/post/49810315337/and-now-this-is-finished-and-i-cannot-look-at-it  
> http://suchbluesky.tumblr.com/post/52840965883/given-my-obvious-lack-of-skill-with-drawing-lions  
> http://suchbluesky.tumblr.com/post/56233944161/enjolras-and-marianne-in-most-of-my-drawings-of


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